One of the cryptocurrency market’s biggest bulls has once again trimmed his optimistic short-term bitcoin price forecast, stating this week that he does not believe that “digital gold” will reach the five-figure mark again until 2019.
According to CNBC, Mike Novogratz, the billionaire founder of cryptocurrency merchant bank Galaxy Digital said on stage at the Economist Finance Disrupted event in Manhattan that he does not expect the bitcoin price to even crack $9,000 before the New Year’s ball drops at least one more time.
“I don’t think it breaks $9,000 this year,” he said at the event on Tuesday, explaining that by this point in the bear market blockchain companies were being forced to sell their cryptocurrency holdings “just to fund the burn rate of the industry,” referring to payroll and other operational costs.
At one point during last year’s bull run, Novogratz predicted the bitcoin price could hit $40,000 in 2018, with the total cryptocurrency market cap swelling past $2 trillion. He later lowered that forecast to $800 billion, indicating that he thought the cryptocurrency market would end the year on par with its all-time high. In late July, he pumped the brakes once more, stating that the market would not reach $800 billion for another calendar year.
Now, as CCN previously reported, he expects the bitcoin price to begin seeing real momentum during the first and second quarters of 2019 and cross the $10,000 threshold at some point during that timeframe. However, barring a massive altcoin rally eclipsing even the one seen in January of this year, it’s unlikely that the overall market will hit $800 billion with bitcoin trading near $10,000, as that would give the largest cryptocurrency a total valuation of just ~$175 billion.
But though he now believes the cryptocurrency market will hit these targets over a longer timeframe than he had originally believed, Novogratz has not soured on the asset class, and he told event attendees that investment firm Tiger Global’s major investment in Coinbase secondary market stock — Tiger reportedly purchased $500 million worth of shares at an $8 billion valuation — is evidence that bitcoin is not analogous to the 17th-century Tulip Bubble often cited by crypto skeptics.
“Here’s the poster child of the crypto space worth $8 billion — that’s a real company, and Tiger’s not a flake of an investor. These are smart, savvy guys,” he said, adding that he sees more institutions investing in cryptocurrencies and industry firms heading into mid and late 2019.
Featured Image from BIG Crypto/Ethereal Summit/YouTube. Chart from TradingView.
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